


After

by amagicbeyond



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Missing Scene, The Raven King Spoilers, because I wished for a little bit more, just a little moment between the final chapter and the epilogue, to Raven King anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25699105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amagicbeyond/pseuds/amagicbeyond
Summary: After the hospital, the stitches, the awkward fist bump with Henry Cheng, Gansey took Blue home to 300 Fox Way – Gansey, remade, Gansey, alive! – and Ronan took Adam home to the Barns.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 6
Kudos: 91





	After

**Author's Note:**

> Assume that I wrote this before we knew Adam could still do magic after Cabeswater was sacrified... because I did.

After the hospital, the stitches, the awkward fist bump with Henry Cheng, Gansey took Blue home to 300 Fox Way – Gansey, remade, Gansey, alive! – and Ronan took Adam home to the Barns.

Ronan drank water from the tap and winced as he swallowed, bruises patterning his neck in the shape of Adam’s hands. He brought Adam a slightly stale cupcake and when Adam’s newly splinted hand reached for it, and then dropped, unwrapped it for him. They sat quietly on the sofa, dirty, spent, and shared it. Ronan licked the too-sweet icing from his fingers. 

He would not soon forget what it felt like to be unmade. 

“I’m sorry,” Adam said, and Ronan knew that he was looking at the bruises his fingers had left.

“Shut up,” said Ronan. “It’s over.”

Adam looked at his hands, spread like a supplication before him, one wrapped in gauze, one with blood still crusted on the knuckles. “I know,” he said. Then, “I guess I’m just Adam now.”

“Just Adam’s fucking enough,” said Ronan, which made Adam turn to him.

Ronan took Adam’s palm in his hand and traced the lines of it. Then he bent his head and pressed a kiss there. 

Adam closed his eyes. Ronan didn’t let go of his hand.

“You must need to sleep,” said Adam, after a moment, eyes still closed.

He did. Ronan remembered sitting in the driver’s seat of the BMW, staring at nothing, staying awake through willpower alone. Ronan remembered cupping a firefly in the palm of his hands while Adam lent him strength and solace. Ronan remembered the creeping black of the demon, sending tendrils of destruction into every part of him, every vein, every breath. 

He remembered collapsing to his knees next to what remained of his mother.

“I’m afraid to dream,” he admitted, quietly.

He kept his eyes downcast as Adam looked at him. Adam’s hands were no less beautiful for all their bruising. They were Cabeswater’s hands no longer. 

Cabeswater had been intertwined in his dreams for so long that Ronan didn’t know what he would find there now.

“I can’t come with you,” Adam said slowly. “But I can be here when you wake.”

He led Ronan upstairs, to Ronan’s own room, where Ronan had found him sitting on his bed, holding an old car, looking all at once so unexpected in that familiar place and yet so perfectly suited to it that Ronan had lost all desire to stick cautiously to the path. Standing in the doorway now, Adam held Ronan’s face in his broken hands and kissed him, sweetly. They lay in Ronan’s bed together, foreheads touching, fingers laced.

When Ronan woke, a single rose was gripped between his fingers, and hot tears were sliding silently down his cheeks.

He couldn’t move, but he could feel the weight of Adam’s arm slung across his chest, Adam’s leg pressed against his own, anchoring him. Something about his return to consciousness must have roused Adam, because in his peripheral vision Ronan could see him blink blearily. 

“Oh,” said Adam. He reached over and carefully pried the rose from Ronan’s unresisting hands, unhooking the thorns from his skin. His palms stung. Adam reached across Ronan to place the rose on his bedside table, and then settled beside him to wait. Ronan felt a gentle kiss pressed to his shoulder.

It wasn’t very long before Ronan’s fingers twitched, and when he could manage it, he reached up to his chest to take Adam’s hand in his.

“Did you see her?” Adam asked quietly.

Ronan swallowed. “In the rose glen,” he said. “Like she was before. She was happy.”

This dream was not a true thing, but it was a comfort. Adam’s thumb brushed a tear from his cheek.


End file.
